You think it’s weird because the focus is to expand beyond game development.
It’s not just about good looking games anymore, VR is increasingly becoming important for the markets of simulations built “around” the tech created for games and CGI animation; the stuff they’ve showcased at last GDC: movie rendering, vehicle design, VR training, etc… there’s a lot of revenue on those avenues and they clearly aim to capture that as it’s obviously cheaper to explore those markets instead of making more and more games. Beyond Paragon and Fortnite I don’t even see Epic focusing on games lately.
All of these companies involved need highly accurate static lighting, GI doesn’t even look good for what they’re doing with UE4.